[It's an immediate refutation, and they can't bite back the thrill of guilt at how swiftly they pounce on it. But they can't...hear that sort of thing.]
Toriel kept chocolate in the fridge. Always looked for another person to hold onto. Asgore still kept your beds. Your photo. The date you came there.
[Asriel...well, they don't need to get into that again. That's not something they've earned the right to retread, and they've brought it up enough, how desperate he was to claw Chara back into his life. Even if he didn't exactly know how to let go, and let go awkwardly, with words that were cruel and painful to the specter of the child who heard them.
Chara was never really erased, scratched away into nothingness. But for someone who's felt as though nothing they've done has ever left any good and lasting meaning, the fact that there's no chocolate in the fridge means he must have forgotten. The fact that she'll find another kid, and instantly forget about you...means something.
The fact that Chara wasn't the greatest person means something.]
But it's easy. It's easy to hear someone say something like that, and think...oh. It's true. It has to be. Because everyone else who's known us thinks the same thing, eventually.
[Don't track mud across the floor. We feed you, clothe you, pay for the roof over your head, and this is how you thank us? By making a mess? You know that if you'd never come along, Mommy and Daddy could be living a nice happy life right around now, don't you? Now why couldn't you have been a nice, good, normal child?
They let Chara close the last bit of distance, their foreheads bumping together softly, their hands still interlinked. Close. Real. Here again.
They don't want to let go.]
Maybe that's why we always feel...better together.
Together, it's like we almost make one whole person.
[It's a weak joke. A poor one. They feel the need to retract it at once, eyes screwing closed with a pang of guilt, again. They've gotten so, so very good at guilt. Can't let it decide everything.]
I don't think you're broken. I think the people in our lives...the people we knew on the Surface - they made us think that. But that's not...
That can't be our fault.
[Children are knives. They don't mean to, but they cut.
But maybe...maybe they are never born that way. Maybe they are sharpened. They are polished into that edge, until they feel like that is all they have to be, all they're meant to be.
It's not the fault of the knife. It's the fault of the person holding it.]
no subject
[It's an immediate refutation, and they can't bite back the thrill of guilt at how swiftly they pounce on it. But they can't...hear that sort of thing.]
Toriel kept chocolate in the fridge. Always looked for another person to hold onto. Asgore still kept your beds. Your photo. The date you came there.
[Asriel...well, they don't need to get into that again. That's not something they've earned the right to retread, and they've brought it up enough, how desperate he was to claw Chara back into his life. Even if he didn't exactly know how to let go, and let go awkwardly, with words that were cruel and painful to the specter of the child who heard them.
Chara was never really erased, scratched away into nothingness. But for someone who's felt as though nothing they've done has ever left any good and lasting meaning, the fact that there's no chocolate in the fridge means he must have forgotten. The fact that she'll find another kid, and instantly forget about you...means something.
The fact that Chara wasn't the greatest person means something.]
But it's easy. It's easy to hear someone say something like that, and think...oh. It's true. It has to be. Because everyone else who's known us thinks the same thing, eventually.
[Don't track mud across the floor. We feed you, clothe you, pay for the roof over your head, and this is how you thank us? By making a mess? You know that if you'd never come along, Mommy and Daddy could be living a nice happy life right around now, don't you? Now why couldn't you have been a nice, good, normal child?
They let Chara close the last bit of distance, their foreheads bumping together softly, their hands still interlinked. Close. Real. Here again.
They don't want to let go.]
Maybe that's why we always feel...better together.
Together, it's like we almost make one whole person.
[It's a weak joke. A poor one. They feel the need to retract it at once, eyes screwing closed with a pang of guilt, again. They've gotten so, so very good at guilt. Can't let it decide everything.]
I don't think you're broken. I think the people in our lives...the people we knew on the Surface - they made us think that. But that's not...
That can't be our fault.
[Children are knives. They don't mean to, but they cut.
But maybe...maybe they are never born that way. Maybe they are sharpened. They are polished into that edge, until they feel like that is all they have to be, all they're meant to be.
It's not the fault of the knife. It's the fault of the person holding it.]